justice-turtle:

Quick reminder that Flight Rising’s one-day registration window opens in about fifteen minutes! (Half past 1pm GMT.)

I’d write a longer post about why it’s a really cool site and you should join ^_^ but I’m currently super focused on pokemon-battling a group of my dragons up to max level so that I can help out my not!Hogwarts House in a friendly-but-intense competition tussle thing we’ve got going on with another House this week. (They’re called Flights. Because dragons.)

So I’ll just drop this fact here: when my Flight did an informal Gdocs survey of people’s demographics after the November reg window when I joined, like 18% of us were nonbinary. Also there was an option for nonbinary gender. :D *shrugs* I can’t speak for other Flights, but Lightning is some damn cool people if you’re into spreadsheets. :D

Ooh. *wanders over to website*

…wow. I have not seen that much impenetrable game-jargon in one place in quite some time. Not that I’m saying Flight Rising is unusually bad, mind you. I’m sure the Runescape home page I looked at this morning would seem just as impenetrable to the untrained eye, but I have eleven years’ experience speaking Gielinorian and it comes as naturally to me now as standard English. It’s been a while since the last time I had to learn a new game language.

Well, you’ve only been playing for what, a month? And you seem to be reasonably fluent already. I’m sure I can cope.

I’m confident that potential near-future me who already has a decent grasp on Flight Rising would like to hear your explanation of why it’s awesome almost as much as I do. Maybe when you’re less busy.

I was about to say I’m not into spreadsheets, but then I remembered the time I charted my menstrual cycles for six months out of sheer curiosity. And the time, eleven years ago, that I read the entire guide section of the Runescape website before even making an account. (The guide section is much, much bigger now. A modern-day newbie could never hope to do the same.) And how, though I enjoyed playing Nethack, I enjoyed reading about it even more. (The so-called “bachelor’s degree” aspect of Nethack, in which you must study all the obscure intricacies of the game in order to do well, puts a lot of people off. I really liked it, that there were entire long guides devoted just to, say, Altars and You.) I suspect I probably am what you’re calling “into spreadsheets”, and just don’t think of it in the same terms. Feel free to correct me if I’ve misinterpreted you.


Tags:

#Flight Rising #reply via reblog

rhamphotheca:

Arctic Squirrels Use Steroids to Bulk Up But Don’t Suffer the Consequences

Fat alone couldn’t get these squirrels through hibernation in burrows that get almost as chilly as -10 degrees Fahrenheit

by Marissa Fessenden

Steroid abuse can give men breasts and infertility, while it strikes women with excessive hair and a deepening voice. Anybody injecting too much testosterone and other muscle-building anabolic steroids risks heart enlargement, liver cancer, high blood pressure, heart attacks — and the mania and delusions called ‘roid rage

Squirrels, however, do fine.

Some squirrels running around with extremely high steroid hormone levels, which help them build muscle before hibernation. But how do they avoid all the negative effects that steroids have on other mammals, like, oh, us? That’s the question that a team of Canada-based scientists have addressed in a new paper, published in Biology Letters

Arctic ground squirrels, male and female, can ramp up the concentration of androgens in their blood to levels that are 10 to 200 times higher than normal. These androgens—testosterone and other hormones typically higher in males—allow the squirrels to pack on 30 percent more muscle mass before they start their eight-month winter hibernation, the team, led by Rudy Boonstra, reports. These squirrels are carrying an amazing amount of muscle mass—four times that of related Columbian ground squirrels…

(read more: Smithsonian Magazine)

photo: James Hager/Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis


Tags:

#squirrel #biology #the more you know

robo-libra:

have you ever noticed how in ‘twelve days of christmas’ so many of the gifts are various birds? who has access to these many birds? why is this person receiving so many birds? can i receive this many birds? i want answers


Tags:

#Christmas #I actually *have* noticed

straighttohelvetica:

Easily the most horrifying line of dialogue I’ve ever heard in an animated movie.

 

castielsunderpants:

NO BUT THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD GODDAMN MOVIE LIKE THE MUSIC IS FUN AND SUPERB THE CHARACTERS WERE REAL PEOPLE EVEN THE ANTAGONISTS THE WOMEN WERE GREAT IT WAS ALL GREAT. IT DOESNT MATTER IF YOURE JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM, ATHEIST, WHATEVER ELSE IT DOESNT MATTER ITS SUCH A GOOD MOVIE AND ITS LITERALLY ONLY 90 MINUTES OF YOUR DAY AND EXPERIENCE THIS HERE JUST CLICK IT LITERALLY IT WILL OPEN IN A NEW TAB GO WATCH. 

 

fifty-shadesofgay:

also can we point out that none of the characters were white? like damn accurate depictions of Biblical characters

 

riskpig:

I reblog every time Prince of Egypt comes up because holy fuck this movie is so good.

 

theparadoxymoron:

first movie i ever saw in theaters

 

comparativelysuperlative:

First movie I ever saw in theaters too! That’s probably not coincidence!

But, like, this line is part of why I grew up thinking utilitarians are monsters. And I mean that in the “check under the bed” sense—there are people who will do literally anything (depending on the circumstances) and not care if the Bible says it’s evil! And they might be coming for you!

And now of course I’m a utilitarian, and so are a lot of the people I think of as doing the most good. Turns out that genocide against a bunch of babies? Not actually a fair portrayal of people doing things for the greater good.

Also, I recognised this gifset as being from Prince of Egypt (through cultural osmosis; haven’t actually seen the movie), but skimmed the context, so up until “they were only slaves” I thought it was Moses talking about murdering every non-Jewish firstborn in Egypt. And I was glad that apparently somebody in the film had tried to call them out on that tactic. But no, it’s just the same-old-same-old.

See, you have no idea how much that incident scarred me as a child. You’re supposed to hear that story and empathise with the oh-poor-Jewish-slaves-who-just-want-to-be-free, but I empathised with the Egyptian peasants. My fellow firstborns, slaughtered en masse for being born to the wrong families at the wrong time. Innocent, unknowing people, who happened to meet a totally arbitrary qualification that I met.

(My parents, in a desperate attempt to console me, tried to tell me I didn’t meet the qualifications. That in their place, I’d have been one of the ones with goat’s blood painted on the doorway. Thing is, being firstborn is more important to me than being Jewish 10.5 months out of the year, and even during Christmas season, it’s not so much “Jewish” that’s important as much as “not Christian”. (The Egyptians weren’t Christian either.))

That damned story was what made me really aware, on a visceral level, of my mortality. Learning how not to be viscerally aware of mortality (apparently some people do manage to function while aware of it, but I can’t imagine how) was an extremely long, painful process. By the time I’d more or less finished, it had taken me something like a third of my lifetime-at-that-point. (Then Five for Fighting released “100 Years” and started getting it played on all the radios and even a TV commercial, and I had to spend another few months re-doing some of the painstakingly crafted mental blocks. I swear, if I ever meet the one man who comprises Five for Fighting, I’ll…well, I probably couldn’t get away with punching him. I suppose I’d tell him about how he rubbed salt in a traumatised child’s wound, and let his own guilt punish him appropriately.)

Occasionally I hear of people who laugh at the idea that the Bible isn’t suitable for children. I’m not laughing.


Tags:

#long post #Brin talks about herself for no particular reason #death tw #(kind of a meta death-tw) #(it’s a story about how *I* needed death tw’s for a few years) #(I haven’t had a full-on 100-Years-style breach of the psychological barriers in a long time) #(but sometimes there’s still little leaks) #(there’s something about the way Florence Welch sings ‘I’m going to drink myself to death’) #(something about the way Cecil says ‘blood’ when reciting the Night Vale Community College minutes) #(that reminds me of being seven) #(I’m glad I’m not seven anymore)


{{next post in sequence}}

superpringle:

Many people message me asking about Pringle’s harness, and where I bought it. So here’s a big post all about his harness for those interested. I didn’t buy it, a friend made it for me. She took his measurements and made it just for him. The lead is a rabbit lead that I did buy from a store. And I got a tag with his name and my phone number on it. 


Tags:

#lizard #adorable #(yes another one)